As many of you may know and surely have seen by now, Rob attended the Austin Film Festival for the film ‘How To Be’ and participated in a Q&A session afterwards with Director Oliver Irving.
Though the footage of the Q&A is already all over YouTube we at TwilightNews have some exclusive ‘Behind The Scenes’ footage put together by Oliver Irving. In addition to the exclusive footage we also have the transcript for the Q&A and several pictures. Here is the Q&A itself. For Behind The Scenes footage click here, for Rob talking to the people who asked questions during the Q&A click here and to see Rob and Oliver signing autographs after the screening click here.
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Austin Film Festival October 18th, 2008
Oliver Irving and Robert Pattinson Q&A
Moderator: Let’s get you guys talking a little bit about how this film started, how you guys got it into being?
Oliver: The very start was, uh, being in a similarish position, I guess, to ,to, to Art where by you know I like kind of finished film school, and I was you know, ‘Right, I am going to make it now as a film director’ and like most people say ‘No you’re not, you’re rubbish’ ya know, and then uh, so like looking, so going back to see my friends, I remember one of the starting points was like going back to like, where I grew up and seeing one of my friends’ parents *turns to Rob and says “Ronnie”* and just going ‘My god, your mum is mental, like she’s really like scary, and this is why you, this is why you are the way you are, ya know it’s like no wonder’ and then like we thought that was funny, and so we started kind of, ya know, playing with these ideas and I just found that kind of funny as the set up of how just normal middle class white people get kind of messed up by their parents and have their own angst and ya know, I thought, ya know there’s not really any English films about that; we either do about like gritty sort of kitchen sink dramas or like puffs in Notting Hill or whatever and I was like ya know there’s all those people just wander around being kind of in the middle somewhere, and that’s how it started, so I started working on that and we just kept like playing with ideas and collecting anecdotes and things and then we were searching for, we had like different ideas for the person to play Art, who wasn’t gonna work, who we weren’t sure, then we started casting for Art, which then went on for *turns to Rob* do you remember how weary I was when you finally came for a casting session, just like, ya know, like well over a year of just like sessions of casting and getting people in and going “oh, this isn’t going to work” and then…
Rob: DUN DA DAAAH
Oliver: Along came Rob…
Rob: Shall I continue the story? Ummmm, uhhhhhh, I am not really sure what the entire next part of the story is, I mean I read the script and um, and uh thought it was kind of different to everything else, I mean pretty much everything Oliver said, I’m just repeating it. Um, but I went in, and I was just kind of in a weird place, I was going to give up acting when I was, when I was doing it, and um, it was just kind of, I was doing music and stuff and I hadn’t even, I had read the script thought it was really funny but I forgot when the audition was when I went in, and I was like extremely nervous..
Oliver: It was a really strange audition
Rob: Yeah, I just went in and kind of, uh, just, just made it up, and normally whenever I do anything different in auditions, people just think you’re crazy, so um, for some reason they didn’t think that.
Oliver: I was looking for something different
Rob: Um, yeah, and it was weird as well because it’s like, it’s kind of a comedy but not really a comedy, and ummm
Oliver: Oh, could you just say something about, just the sound shouldn’t have been that bad. No, I mean, all the way through that the sound was really like muffled, but it’s not my fault, we connected through a direct line and blah blah blah, it’s not my fault.
Rob: This microphone, I don’t know, have you got really good projection *he is told to hold it closer to his mouth* Oh, there we go!
Oliver: *wants to say something, reaches for microphone, joking* I’ll answer your questions for Rob, thanks! Like, like when, when Rob came in, like a lot of these, these, these auditions were quite like soulless things, they’re quite like you know, and these people are definitely trying ‘oh, I could be the actor in this film, you’re really like me and stuff’ where as *to Rob* as soon as the moment you came in we just ended up, sort of maybe getting the giggles a little bit, cause it like, you sort of forgot the lines on one thing and I said ‘oh, just go for it’ and so you just start making it up in the frame, and it was like, at first I was like ‘yeah, there’s something different here’ and then we did like 2 or 3 call backs, I think.
Rob: Really?
Oliver: Yeah. Here’s an interesting story, I saw Urvashi the other day, the casting director.
Rob: Oh really?
Oliver: Yeah, yeah I saw her the other day and she said to me, I said ‘Oh yeah, Rob’s, he’s doing great’ and she said to me ‘It’s a good thing you took him, because, that, on that day, if you, on that day if you hadn’t taken Rob I was quitting the film.’ She said, after a year or whatever of casting, she was so pissed off with me she said, she knew you were the right person and she was all like smiles to me, and ‘I think you should really do that’, and saying that she was like ‘yeah yeah’ and if I had said ‘No’ she was going to write it off, that’s it, and walk out the door.
Audience member Maya (Maia): I have two questions. Uh one, could you sing to us?
Rob: You know how I sounded in the movie. I’m terrible.
Oliver: Read your t-shirt out to him.
Maya (Maia): Um, can I hug you?
Rob: Yeah, if you want. You’ll probably be really disappointed, though. Ok, ok. *hugs her with prompting from audience*
Rob: Are you alright? I don’t know what to do. I’m emotionally retarded, that’s why I’m never having kids *laughs*.
Oliver: *to Maia* Ok, go back to your mum.
Rob: *into mic* That’s why I’m never having kids.
Oliver: How about having sex for making them? (Unclear recording)
Audience member: Hi Rob, you do a lot of crazy things in the movie, but you were able to portray humanity in Art. Did you find it hard to hold back from keeping Art from turning into a caricature?
Rob: Uh, yeah, that’s what I was thinking when I was wa - this is the first time I’ve seen it on the big screen, I was sort of watching… I mean, there was always that kind of element in the script, uh, which, I don’t know how to… it was kind of, it’s like pseudo realism or something. Like you sort of read it, and then it’s like all the things, like the big scene with his mother when, um, when she says ‘I’m so disappointed’, you’re like, I mean you’re *turns to Oliver* what is it? You’re..
Oliver: Which one, the cemetery one?
Rob: No, the bedroom one, when she’s like, you’re…
Oliver: Umm, why, why are you always…
Audience: Guilty
Rob: Guilty, yeah, guilty, yeah ‘of course I feel guilty.’ And there’s always the whole tone of that, that’s what I kind of liked about it. It’s that you can never tell if it is supposed to be, supposed to be funny or whether you are supposed to like, and it’s not even like a sort of kind of black comedy, it’s like… I don’t know, it’s just something really weird. Because in a lot of ways, Art’s a completely unsympathetic character, he’s just like a whining idiot. But at the same time, like, you know, you watch so many movies where there’s a character arc where, you know you end up you’re an ‘everyman’ but then you sort of struggle through your problems and then you end up being great to the end, but hardly anybody does anything worthwhile in their lives,(unclear recording)anything else other than (unclear recording). That’s what I liked about the end, it’s not really a happy ending, you know, he’s happy in his own head at the end and he thinks he’s great, but like…
Oliver: There’s the potential for being happy, though.
Rob: Yeah, he’s, yeah well… *hands mic to Oliver*
Oliver: The idea of the ending is that you, it’s like, you kind of leaves to make the choice with like ‘well I think he’s probably doing alright’, and when he says ‘I’m doing fine’ he’s like saying ‘Yeah, I’m doing alright actually, I’m gonna like,’ but it’s not that it’s gonna be like, the outcome, he doesn’t get the girl and like get a record contract, and we always talked about doing a Scooby Doo ending where like ‘The guy was amazing! Best I’ve ever seen, we’re gonna sign you for a 3 picture deal, and the girlfriend comes back, like ‘I love you so much’. (Unclear recording) falls over on his face, and everything is great, but life isn’t quite like that really.
Rob: Yeah, I mean, yeah so I just liked it and no one really, I mean in the initial thing, no one clapped at the end and I don’t even notice that no one’s clapping. That’s what I really loved about it, I mean, it’s like one person did clap once and then is embarrassed about clapping
Oliver: Lots of little bits like some of the best improvisation you did, I thought, were a bits like, the bit where you were with Ronnie and you say ‘you’re such an idiot.’ It’s like, you just said it one day when we were doing a take like ‘you’re such an idiot’ and I was like ‘what was that?’ and it sounded great. And on those last takes, there’s a whole, obviously a few takes of him playing the gig, on one of them right at the end, you turned the microphone when you say, you don’t even hear it , he says very quietly, ‘Ah that was wicked.’ I think was that, because you were like, oh take was really good, I think you thought that the camera had stopped rolling, or was that because you thought it was…
Rob: Yeah, I thought I was… it was the character, I was in character. And, uh it’s like but, yeah the thing with the mirror as well, um,… Sorry I’m just not even answering the question anymore.
Audience: Hi, how are you? Um, I’m not sure about you, but I saw a little tiny bit of Daniel Gale in this role. Did you put anything together from your old characters, and also can I have a hug too?
Rob: Um, yeah, there was a little bit I mean there’s always kind of, uhhh, ya know you do. *mic issues, did I turn it off? Ah, I’ve broken it* Um, yeah there’s the thing, I mean, normally I went through up until ya know a year ago, I kind of thought I’d never get another job again. So I mean, you never think, you don’t expect people to see your old work. *More mic issues… really rubbish.* Um, yeah, there, I mean I did, there were a couple of jobs I mean, I had been kind of learning how to act within jobs and so you kind of have ideas of characters you want to play, and the Daniel Gale I guess, I mean that was, I mean that, I mean I thought I was completely miscast in that and so I kind of did something really extreme in that and I was kind of more toned down, I guess, but it was little facets of it that would come into How To Be, and um, yeah everything we do has got little bits, like in Twilight I got bits of that stuff.
Audience: Do you look for certain roles, or do you just kind of like look for things that interest you?
Rob: Um, I always look for stuff that interests me, I mean, generally the roles that interest me always end up given to little skinny people with black hair, (unclear) but I mean, I’ve kind of, I mean I’ve kind of tried, you kind of have to make a commitment to casting directors wherever you are, like you have to be consistently strange, or consistently you have to convince you within your real life you are what you, the parts you want to play otherwise you’ll never get through the door. I mean after, after Harry Potter, I kind of, the only part, the only thing people saw me as was like a private school boy, um like smiling guy, good guy thing. But uh, and so it took awhile, took a really long time to uh, to kind of break away from that. And I pretty much ended up doing, the only jobs I’ve done are the only jobs I’ve been offered, pretty much, apart from How To Be.
Audience: That’s about to change.
Rob: What?
Audience: THAT’S ABOUT TO CHANGE.
Rob: But at the same time I’m really happy about it, I mean, I’ve ended up doing the weirdest jobs like from playing a like a private school boy type part and then I’ve had jobs playing like a paraplegic, then like a kind of geek and like Salvador Dali, and now I’m a vampire. I’ve had the most random characters.
Oliver: When I cast you for the part I didn’t know about Harry Potter, I mean you said to me “oh yeah, whatever” and I was like “whatever”. But it was after that, when we cast you, after, they were saying ‘Oh, you know you cast this guy that was in Harry Potter blah blah blah,” like you know, the telegraph person to look at, and I was like ‘Really? Ok, he just seemed right for the part, ya know, not that we didn’t have genuine casting choices, we just lucked out that we got the right person on the right day, you know. That’s the way it works I guess, luckily. But you know, two years or a year of looking for the right person, makes you eventually get lucky.
Thanks to Kim and Krista for Q&A footage, pictures and transcript. Transcript edited by Sanguina.
